The Filboid Studge Man
Mar. 13th, 2016 03:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sheenaghpughIt isn't often you look at a writer and think how well he would have done in some more practical line of business - mostly, the poorhouse would have beckoned - but the more I read Saki, the more I realise he should have gone into the advertising/promotions industry, if only he'd outlived the trenches of the Great War (it's good that we have his last words; sad that they should have been "Put that bloody cigarette out!"). Despite (or perhaps because of) his general contempt for ordinary folk, on the evidence of stories like The Secret Sin of Septimus Brope, Cousin Teresa and Filboid Studge: The Story of a Mouse That Helped, he had a very fair idea of how to sell a product or start a trend. Look at how, in "Filboid Studge", Mark Spayley manages to sell the ailing breakfast cereal Pipenta by rebranding it as something truly revolting (the new name says it all) that one eats not as a pleasure but as a duty, "for one's health". Basically, it's All-Bran.
Clovis operates a similar reverse psychology when helping out his pal Septimus, who writes pop songs for a living but is having trouble thinking of anything new (or finding a decent set of rhymes for "Florrie"). Clovis's solution is inspired:
For Saki's other virtue in this field would have been never to overestimate his audience's intellect. The ditty that sweeps London in "Cousin Teresa" is the last word in pointless vacuity, but one can't deny the rhythm's catchy in the extreme. When its author Lucas finds himself in the honours list instead of his much worthier older brother who has been administering some far-flung bit of the Empire, we are meant to feel slightly shocked, but in fact, as the Minister observes, this is what the honours system was about then, as it is now: "It would be rather a popular move". Fay Weldon and Salman Rushdie both worked in advertising for a time, but I think Saki would have made a fortune at it; he had both the necessary verbal flair and imagination and the even more necessary complete cynicism.
Shame, in so many ways, about "that bloody cigarette".
"Once the womenfolk discovered that it was thoroughly unpalatable, their zeal in forcing it on their households knew no bounds. “You haven’t eaten your Filboid Studge!” would be screamed at the appetiteless clerk as he hurried weariedly from the breakfast-table, and his evening meal would be prefaced by a warmed-up mess which would be explained as “your Filboid Studge that you didn’t eat this morning.” Those strange fanatics who ostentatiously mortify themselves, inwardly and outwardly, with health biscuits and health garments, battened aggressively on the new food.
Clovis operates a similar reverse psychology when helping out his pal Septimus, who writes pop songs for a living but is having trouble thinking of anything new (or finding a decent set of rhymes for "Florrie"). Clovis's solution is inspired:
“How you bore me, Florrie,Who can seriously doubt that this refreshing burst of honesty would, as Saki asserts with magnificent dismissiveness, have taken off "in Blackpool and other places where they sing"?
With those eyes of vacant blue;
You’ll be very sorry, Florrie,
If I marry you.
Though I’m easygoin’, Florrie,
This I swear is true,
I’ll throw you down a quarry, Florrie,
If I marry you.”
For Saki's other virtue in this field would have been never to overestimate his audience's intellect. The ditty that sweeps London in "Cousin Teresa" is the last word in pointless vacuity, but one can't deny the rhythm's catchy in the extreme. When its author Lucas finds himself in the honours list instead of his much worthier older brother who has been administering some far-flung bit of the Empire, we are meant to feel slightly shocked, but in fact, as the Minister observes, this is what the honours system was about then, as it is now: "It would be rather a popular move". Fay Weldon and Salman Rushdie both worked in advertising for a time, but I think Saki would have made a fortune at it; he had both the necessary verbal flair and imagination and the even more necessary complete cynicism.
Shame, in so many ways, about "that bloody cigarette".
